The museum tells fascinating stories about the country’s achievements and key events in the Cold War in the 1960s as well. Photo: Muhammed Davood
There is a famous joke about a father-son duo who lived during the Soviet era. It goes like this: The two were on a camping trip. They pitched their tent under the stars and went to sleep. Some hours later, the father woke up his son and asked him, "look up to the sky and tell me what you see?”
"I see millions of galaxies, planets and stars. It’s quite likely there are some planets like Earth out there. And if there are a few planets like Earth out there, there might also be a father-son duo like us,” the son replied philosophically. Father slapped him hard and said, “idiot, someone has stolen our tent!"
It was this passion that propelled Soviet victories in the space race. They explored unknown territory and wondered at nature and natural phenomena. That was the reason why the Soviet space program pioneered many aspects of space exploration, including the first satellite in orbit, the first animal in space, the first man, woman and crew in space, and the first space-walk.
The whole world, including the US and the NASA, watched in astonishment as Soviet spacecrafts kept visiting the orbit frequently.
It is an interactive museum chronicling the outstanding achievements of the Soviet people in space exploration.
The spaceship that carried Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin to space is on display at the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics in Moscow. It is an interactive museum chronicling the outstanding achievements of the Soviet people in space exploration.
The entrance hall is dedicated to Gagarin and plenty of artworks relating to his obsession with conquering space under the theme ‘The dawn of the Space Age’.
Taking a trip through Russia's history is to time travel to a recent past when the world had two superpowers. The museum’s galleries tell fascinating stories about the country’s achievements and key events in the Cold War in the 1960s as well.
In 1955, following the announcement that the US was intending to launch artificial satellites for the International Geophysical Year, the Soviets responded four days later to declare that they too would be launching a satellite. This sparked the start of one of the most famous periods in space exploration.
Taking a trip through Russia's history is to time travel to a recent past when the world had two superpowers
Though it was America who made announcement first, the Soviets won the first round when they launched Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957. America responded quickly, but their first satellite attempt failed on December 6, 1957. The Soviets went on to win the next few rounds of the space war. Even as the US and the Soviet Union vigorously competed to push the boundaries of mankind’s exploration of space, the latter created history by sending the first human - Gagarin - into outer space when his Vostok spacecraft completed an orbit of the Earth on 12 April 1961.
It created a sensation around the world and spurred the US to accelerate its own program.
On September 12, 1962, US president John F Kennedy stood before an audience at Rice University in Houston, and proclaimed that "we choose to go to the moon”.
What followed was an intense rivalry between these two world super powers to gain the upper hand in the space war. There were several attempts and failures on both sides. Finally, on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin landed on the moon on Apollo 11, helping the US assert the country's global dominance.
While strolling through the museum's fascinating halls, I was looking for a familiar face among the photos adorning the brightly illuminated walls. Though I could not find anything related to Rakesh Sharma, the first and only Indian to travel into space, I’m certain that his images and the amazing life story might be somewhere there among the glittering array of astronauts who reached for the stars!
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